Our author was the son of John Shakespear, and was born at Stratford upon Avon in Warwickshire, April 1564, at it appears by public records relating to that town.  The family from which he is descended was of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen.  His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool, being incumbred with a large family of ten children, could afford to give his eldest son but a slender education.  He had bred him at a free school, where he acquired what Latin he was master of, but how well he understood that language, or whether after his leaving the school he made greater proficiency in it, has been disputed and is a point very difficult to settle.  However it is certain, that Mr. John Shakespear, our author’s father, was obliged to withdraw him early from school, in order to have his assistance in his own employment, towards supporting the rest of the family.  “It is without controversy, says Rowe, that in his works we scarce find any traces that look like an imitation of the ancients.  The delicacy of his taste, and the natural bent of his own great genius, equal, if not superior to some of the best of theirs, would certainly have led him to read and study them with so much pleasure, that some of their fine images would naturally have insinuated themselves into, and been mixed with his own writings; so that his not copying at least something from them, may be an argument of his never having read them.  Whether his ignorance of the ancients was disadvantageous to him or no, may admit of dispute; for tho’ the knowledge of them might have made him more correct, yet it is not improbable, but that the regularity and deference for them which would have attended that correctness, might have restrained some of that fire, impetuosity, and even beautiful extravagance, which we cannot help admiring in Shakespear.”

As to his want of learning, Mr. Pope makes the following just observation:  That there is certainly a vast difference between learning and languages.  How far he was ignorant of the latter, I cannot (says he) determine; but it is plain he had much reading, at least, if they will not call it learning; nor is it any great matter if a man has knowledge, whether he has it from one language or from another.  Nothing is more evident, than that he had a taste for natural philosophy, mechanics, ancient and modern history, poetical learning, and mythology.  We find him very knowing in the customs, rites, and manners of the Romans.  In Coriolanus, and Julius Caesar, not only the spirit but manners of the Romans are exactly drawn; and still a nicer distinction is shewn between the manners of the Romans in the time of the former and the latter.  His reading in the ancient historians is no less conspicuous, in many references to particular passages; and the speeches copied from Plutarch in Coriolanus may as well be made instances of his learning as those copied from Cicero in the Cataline of Ben Johnson.  The manners of other